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Steamed Chicken

A whole chicken seasoned with pepper and salt, steamed until cooked, then sliced and served with dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Steamed Chicken

Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Steamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Rub the inside of the chicken with black pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the chicken in a steamer over boiling water.

  3. Cover and steam for 1.5 hours.

  4. Keep the chicken hot while preparing the dressing.

Serve

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces, arrange on a platter, and serve with dressing over it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Its protein sets as it cooks, giving the dish its main structure and body.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite to the chicken's surface.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling and the steamer covered for the full steaming time. Steam cooks by condensing on the chicken and transferring heat. If the water stops boiling or the lid is lifted often, heat drops and the chicken may cook unevenly or stay undercooked near the bone.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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